In modern society, cold storage facilities often have forklift accessible door openings into a cold space from a warm space. Various barrier devices including overhead suspended sliding insulated doors have been used in the past to provide some measure of thermal control and to secure the door openings from unwanted intrusions.
With many prior art doors, there have been problems of unwanted heat exchange between the cold and warm spaces, ice buildups in and around the door opening, and unwanted freezing of the closed door in the door opening. Additionally, many prior art doors are more susceptible to unwanted impact damage from forklifts, forklift loads, or other moving objects that may impact the door during operations in or about the door opening by such equipment and objects.
Forklift operations through and near door openings and associated sliding doors in cold storage facilities often result in impact incidents between the forklift or forklift loads and the doors that selectively close the door opening resulting in unwanted damage to the door that often necessitates expensive repair or replacement of the door or associated structures.
The present invention relates to a novel flexible door panel cold storage door system having at least one overhead track-mounted horizontally sliding flexible door panel useful for the convenient closing and opening of a door opening into a cold storage area that incorporates features that reduce or eliminate the above mentioned problems.
The instant invention incorporates a novel movable door panel that reduces or eliminates damage to the door panel that might result from impact incidents and reduces maintenance and downtime as compared with many other prior art cold storage sliding doors that would suffer significant damage and require significant maintenance and undesirable downtime from comparable impact incidents. The instant invention is designed for easy and convenient repair in the event of any damage from impact incidents involving the door panel.
The instant invention incorporates a movable flexible door panel having spaced vertical suspension cables, at least two vertical stiffeners, and at least one horizontal stiffener closely and elastically attached between and to the vertical stiffeners and provides a durable panel that has improved resistance to undesired breaching or damage of the panel by accident or by malicious intent by unauthorized entities or forces.
The door hanger assemblies of the instant invention allow the door panel to swing outward away or inward toward the wall during an impact incident and lessen the likelihood of damage to the hanger assemblies and to the overhead horizontal track and carriage system to which the hanger assemblies are attached